The Slow Plague, a gender-targeting infection with no cure, killed billions of women and girls worldwide and created a dystopian society in which the survivors are treated as highly valuable commodities.

Although their market value is high, women’s rights decline as they become objects of avarice, awe, and worship—possessions to be owned or won in high-stakes games.

Kutri Chandigarh, a rare beauty, is shipped from her native India to Los Angeles, a shattered metropolis barricaded behind a radiation-proof wall. Within the city stronghold, a bleak, broken, male-led society is mesmerized by stupefying programs pumped out by Little Angel Studios: an endless parade of reality TV shows.

The studio’s number one hit is Good Breeding: a bevy of ethnically “pure” young women compete to marry a chosen suitor and produce a “perfect” family under the scrutiny of the public eye.

Kutri has dreamed of wining the competition since early childhood. But, when she arrives in LA and meets Jakob Freeman, her assigned matchmaker, the fantasy quickly turns sour and twists into a horrific nightmare extending far beyond Kutri and the man she chooses for herself.

As Kutri tries to escape the fate she once coveted, Jakob is swept up in events that threaten him body and soul and spark memories of a past he has so desperately tried to forget.